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Yonge Street project in North York might become casualty of budget debate

City council’s sometimes chaotic 15-hour budget meeting included dozens of choices that won’t generate headlines but can shape Toronto neighbourhoods for years to come.

A 24-20 vote in favour of a Councillor David Shiner motion has thrown a wrench in a long-fostered community plan to remake a stretch of Yonge St. in North York, from Sheppard to Finch Aves., including the addition of bike lanes.

Bikeways reducing vehicle lanes from three in each direction to two would worsen gridlock, flood side streets with overflow traffic and dangerously aim cyclists at a busy transit hub, Councillor David Shiner said of the proposed “Re-imagining Yonge Street” project. (Tara Walton / Toronto Star file photo)

Councillor John Filion, whose Ward 23 encompasses almost all the proposed “Re-imagining Yonge Street” project, says it “might be dead.” He pins much of the blame on Mayor John Tory, whose note to council allies — recommending how they vote on various 20 7 budget items — backed Shiner’s motion.

“This project has been in the works for at least two years, enthusiastically supported by the community and city staff, including the chief planner, to change the bleakness of that strip of Yonge St. — to widen sidewalks, put in bike lanes and other features to try to turn a sea of high rises and storefronts into a real community,” Filion said in an interview Thursday.

“My extreme disappointment is in the mayor — (the Shiner motion) only passed because he was actively supporting it. The mayor’s office was pulling votes away from me.”

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Shiner, whose Ward 24 runs south to Finch, strongly disputes that. He — not Tory — spoke to a majority of councillors to get a pause on $4 million in design work on a project yet to go to council. Bikeways reducing vehicle lanes from three in each direction to two would worsen gridlock, flood side streets with overflow traffic and dangerously aim cyclists at a busy transit hub, he said.

“There are small businesses depending on the parking in front of them” that bike lanes would remove, he added in an interview. “Members of council don’t own the ward — this is a citywide issues, not a John Filion issue, and Yonge St. is really a highway.”

Council last June approved a 10-year cycling plan that foresees the lanes on north Yonge. City staff included in their 2017 budget plans $2 million in city money and a matching $2 million federal grant to start designing the unfunded project, which was to soon go to public works committee and then city council.

Shiner, however, launched a surprise successful motion at this month’s executive committee to delay the project to 2018.

At council he changed the motion so $4 million was removed from the budget and transferred to a reserve fund. Councillors also deferred consideration of the project “to the 2018 budget process” when they could decide to aim the money elsewhere.

Fillon says the federal money was granted with specific conditions and a time frame and the city can’t just park it for future use. Also, the delay dims hopes of getting 2018 federal infrastructure money toward the project’s estimated $47-million cost, he said.

Shiner insists the motion will allow the project to go to public works committee and council this year, along with information from a Yonge St., corridor study, for possible approval and unlocking of the design money.

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When a reporter questioned how that’s possible when his motion deferred consideration until the 2018 budget process, and read the motion to him, Shiner said city staff wrote it with his guidance and his intention was to allow consideration this year.

Murray Stewart, who has lived just north of Sheppard for about two decades, said he supports the street facelift after attending community meetings where he learned information that allayed concerns over traffic flow and the impact of bike lanes.

On-street parking outside rush hour already reduces the number of vehicle lanes, there is lots of parking in nearby lots and wider sidewalks and design features should bring more people to shops and a street that is now “a bit of a wasteland,” he said.

Also unhappy with the pause is Jared Kolb, executive director of Cycle Toronto, who calls that section of Yonge a key part of council’s cycling plan.

“To see that mayor Tory is supporting this shakes people in the cycling community and the broader road-safety community,” Kolb said, adding cyclists have been killed and injured there. “For a lot of us this is deeply disturbing.”

Asked for comment from Tory, his communications director Don Peat said: “The mayor had concerns about approving funding for a project that has not yet been approved by committee and that ultimately is not included in the 10-year capital plan.

“Further, as Yonge and Sheppard has been identified as one of the most congested intersections in the city, any plan that would reduce lanes of traffic in that area is a serious concern as well.

“Council voted on the information it had before it, and the mayor looks forward to the project coming to public works where it will receive further scrutiny.”

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